About

Providing straightforward information pertaining to drugs, drug use & drug policy. The Grey Pages promotes drug-related literacy and advocates a system of viable and tolerant drug policies. This is my personal collection of commentaries, essays, tid-bits, and other such writings on everything ranging from drug use, drug policy and drug-myths, to drug-science, addiction, human behavior, and the workings of the human brain. I started this blog with a particular focus on opioids, and over the past year have found my interest gravitate toward the intriguing, ever-changing world of designer intoxicants (i.e. "research chemicals" or "designer drugs").

Friday, March 9, 2012

The Disease Model: Its Current Role in Mainstream Science & Policy Discourse (A Short Summary)

It's been over the last several years that proponents of the drug laws have changed the tune of their debating points. This has made recent policy discussion particularly difficult for those who support reforming our drug laws yet remain naive in their understanding of the very nature of drugs and drug use. The shift in the primary pro-criminalization talking points may be the only factor still providing such anti-drug rhetoric any remaining illusion of legitimacy. And how so? Advocates of controlled substance laws have immunized themselves from the arguments of "free market" and "free choice". The doctrines of cultural, social, and market protectionism that currently underlie US drug laws have become dependent upon the bogus premise that habitual drug users (i.e. "addicts") are victims of a medical illness (i.e. addiction) and have been robbed of their capacity for free will and conscious choice. Simply put, they've exploited the monopolistic interests of the medical profession (who in turn have exploited the needs of drug users), using a perversion of launguage and science to propagate the demonic-possession-like theory of drug use which dictates that drugs are willful & mystical entities capable of "hijacking" the brain and thus forcing the addict to use them involuntarily - a phenomenon having no rightful place in the scientific or public sphere, as it defies metaphysics.

In order to gain ground in promoting a reasonable understanding of drug use and drug problems, we must abandon the superstitious models underlying current scientific and drug-policy discourse.